The Romanian Dream » irrationalities

The “Not My Fault” Culture

Mircea — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 05:04:19 +0000

The scene unfolds very quickly as one reckless driver doesn’t stop at… a stop sign and hits a car who was passing through the intersection. In his defense he did brake after seeing the other car. Damages are somewhat minimal: the right fender for the victim, the front bumper for the aggressor. Not really a big deal. That’s why we have insurance, right?

The interesting part starts now. If you were to ask the person who failed to stop: “whose fault the accident was?”, a magical moment will take place. You will find out that maybe it was the car’s manufacturer fault that the breaks didn’t stop the car sooner. Or that it is the others driver fault, because he was obviously speeding though the intersection. Or maybe the Stop sign is not visible enough. Or the road is not well maintained. Or whoever is responsible for the road knows that this is a dangerous junction and should have placed a traffic light there. Or maybe it’s because a squirrel chewed on the brakes while the car was parked. See a pattern here? Everybody and everything is to blame, except for the one that should get the blame… at least in his eyes. It’s what I call the “Not My Fault” response.

The response is so common and so well rooted in the behavior of the people in the US that I say that the culture around accountability is the “Not My Fault” culture. Admitting that it’s your fault will cost you. It’s safer to just play dumb and pretend that you’re actually a good person.

And if you think that things are not that bad, think about liability waivers. Why would, for example, a gym need a liability waiver? I tell you why… because if someone breaks their neck while going down the stairs they would actually sue the gym if it wasn’t for that waiver. It’s not your fault that you are a dumb-ass and cannot pay attention while going down the stairs. It’s the gym’s fault for putting the stairs in your way.

When stupidity overrides common sense, “Not My Fault” becomes the default.

Dolls?!

Mircea — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 02:14:00 +0000

If your IQ is smaller than your age you’re gonna’ totally dig this hip dolls I saw:

I’m normally a person that likes toys but this twitard thingy has gone too far. I mean… C’mon! Dolls??. And right near the checkout counters. When will the stupidity stop?

BTW, you should totally buy Edward, not Jacob. Jacob is lame. I mean there were more Jacobs dolls left than all the other 2 figures combined. Jacob is lame. Pair Edward with Bella, we know you want them to be together! Let Edward suck the blood out of her plastic neck already!!

Jesus is a Bodybuilder

Mircea — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:23:43 +0000

When I saw the big Jesus on the t shirt of a guy at the gym I thought to myself: he must be one of those hardcore Christians than everybody in the US has grown to accept. Still had a slightly WTF feeling, but you cannot really question the beliefs of a hardcore Christian, can you?

After that I read the full message on the t shirt and understood that not only was he a Christian, he was also a bodybuilder. The t shirt read: Jesus is a bodybuilder. Adding Ephesians 4:11-16 underneath this should add some authenticity, not. Talking about weird things.

Here is the site where you can see all the Jesus gear to help you with your workout & shit:

http://www.discipletraininggear.com/disciple-training-gear-apparel

If you’re not already hooked by this one, surely the God is a power lifter one will get you hooked.

Equilibrium

Mircea — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 22:20:27 +0000

I was listening to the radio (92.5FM) while driving the other day. As everybody has to make a living at some point the commercials started. Normally I wouldn’t pay attention to them, but since I was waiting at a rather long red light (http://www.bellevuewa.gov/trafficcam/cctv004.asp) I found myself listening. Wait, it gets better

The first commercial was for laser assisted liposuction. Cutting edge stuff for the narcissistic fatso. Exercise? Eating correctly? At least reading the damn labels on the ultra processed food we’re buying? Nah.. We don’t have time for this. Just aim the nice laser at me and suck the fat like there’s no tomorrow. Suck it. Now, if everybody would have the money the “laser people” are asking for, we would definitely eradicate obesity from the face of the Earth.

The second commercial was for McDonalds. It was advertising some cheap Coke that you can buy with some crap menu that they have. The commercial made some sense, I guess, if you were into this fast food shit or if you cannot afford anything else. We are, after all, in the middle of an economic crisis (do not go in the parking lot of your favorite mall if you want to keep living with this apocalyptic image).

Now, each commercial on its own made sense. They were trying to sell you something and were managing (more or less) to get the message through by using pleasant sounding people and light, joyful jingles. The really disturbing fact is that they played one right after the other.

Now what am I supposed to understand if I am listening to the radio? Is this a tactic? Are they just dumb?

After the traffic light turned green and I started accelerating on the interstate ramp I remembered the words of my math high school teacher (who was also a bit of a philosopher): “for everything in this world there are pluses and minuses so everything reaches a stable state, an equilibrium”. If you look at the commercials like that, one was the plus and one was the minus. The radio people had grouped them together like this to prevent an unstable state. Maybe they knew something. Maybe the time-space continuum would have been torn if only one commercial of these commercials was played.

Leaving your mark… the snow edition

Mircea — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:47:15 +0000

Episode 4 from “human nature” series:

All pictures were taken during the fabulous Mt Pilchuck hike.

Group Death Cooperative

Mircea — Wed, 19 May 2010 03:35:53 +0000

I’ve written about the American Health System before: http://theromaniandream.com/blog/2010/02/01/taboo-%E2%80%93-american-health-system/

It’s not that my naivety level has suffered any major changes lately, but my experience with my health care “provider” (aka Group Health Cooperative) is a surreal one.

Lately I have been having some mild pain in my right hip and I went to have it looked at. After a somewhat short visit at the primary care physician I was referred to orthopedics and physical therapy. The first surprise came when scheduling the PT appointment. The time I have to wait for someone from PT to consult me from the moment I made the appointment: 3.5 weeks. That’s not surprising considering my previous experiences, but 3.5 weeks is too long. But wait! After the visit to the orthopedics, I found out that I need an MRI for them to be able to tell what’s wrong. I attempted to schedule that today and the happy event will take place on the 20th of July. That’s about 9 weeks, or if you want it in months: more than 2 months. I’ll say that again: 9 weeks! What kind of health care is this?

What do you suppose will happen in the following 9 weeks if there is something fundamentally wrong with my hip? Do you think that the way these guys choose to provide medical services is at least flawed if not absolutely moronic? Do I need to say that this is for an insurance that’s supposed to be one of the bests that there is, at least in these area?

At least, back home in Romania, if you have the money and you are willing to shell it out for a quality medical service you can do that. Think about this for a second and you’ll see how wrong the system is over here on so many levels.

That being said, I’m officially giving the longest finger to the nice Cooperative and I’m looking forward to switching to Premera, where hopefully things will suck less and I will manage to get some bang for the buck the insurance company gets.

Cereal Label Fail

Mircea — Sat, 15 May 2010 15:33:15 +0000

Here is the label:

And the fail is the way the difference between cereal with milk and cereal without milk is listed.

Hey Kellogg’s, you have 2 columns in there. Use them to list the nutritional content in both cases (you do that for vitamins and it works, right?). Don’t be dumb and put this info in the foot note – nobody reads that. It makes you look like you’re either tying to trick me, the customer, or nobody reviewed your label. Either way, this is a fail.

And since we’re giving improvement suggestions, the site that you’re using to promote this products totally sucks. Good luck trying to read the nutritional information on the site.

Leaving your mark… the urban edition

Mircea — Mon, 10 May 2010 05:12:37 +0000

Time for episode 3 in “human nature” studies series.

All pictures are taken near Exit 13 I405 ramps.

Leaving your mark… the obtuse edition

Mircea — Sat, 01 May 2010 20:31:24 +0000

In a previous post I started to explore human nature. Now it’s time for episode 2.

Here are some samples of what people left inside the Heybrook Lookout:

feedback is king

all you need is love

mesage from evil robots from the future

You Will Respect My Authoritah!

The Catcher in the… Tulip Field ?!

Mircea — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 02:12:21 +0000

In the previous post I showed you some beautiful pictures (I hope) form the Skagit Valley Tulip festival. What the pictures don’t show is how much effort is involved in taking a nice picture when huge crowds of people are involved. Let me explain:

Each of the tulip farms/tulip fields that we went to had a sign similar to these ones posted where everybody could easily see it:

Now, what do you suppose happened when ‘the people’ saw these signs? Probably it takes a lot of work to keep those fields in good shape for everyone to enjoy (not to mention the amount of work involved in actually raising growing the tulips). So you would expect that people obey the signs. After all, we all obey, for example, traffic signs, right?

Now, let’s do a small exercise of lateral thinking by looking at the following pictures:

I will stop at these 4 pictures. I have roughly 50 on my camera, some of them intentionally taken, but most of them because I had no other choice. How cool is that?
So I kept thinking: What the fudge? What part of stay ‘out of rows’ is unclear? What part of ‘do not pick up the flowers’ is unclear?
Watching these beautiful creatures enjoying the sun and roaming the tulip fields, I genuinely had the sensation that I was back in Romania. I thought that only there you can find such disrespect for a simple, clear instruction. Well… surprise, surprise. I guess in the end it’s human nature not give 2 shits about the person next to you. You did pay 5 dollars to get access to the fields right? It’s your God given right to walk among the tulips, right?

And, in the end, if you do want to give a shit, although nobody else does, you can certainly do that too: